THE MUSK OX IOI 



The British mammalia in these prosaic days have 

 fallen on hard times. Cave lion and cave bear, 

 rhinoceros and mammoth, giant Irish deer and white 

 urus all gone ; even the English beaver is extinct. The 

 marten and wild cat are rare almost to vanishing 

 point. Stoat and weasel, fox and badger stand 

 to-day for the glorious game animals of the past, 

 while such small deer as bats and shrews usurp the 

 place once occupied by mastodon and sabre-toothed 

 tiger. However, there yet remain elsewhere 

 representatives of the great fauna that once 

 inhabited these islands ; thus the African lion is 

 indistinguishable from that found in cave deposits, 

 and the musk ox, once British, still lingers in 

 Greenland and Arctic America east of the Mackenzie 

 River. 



The musk ox (Ovibos moschatus] umimak of the 

 Esquimaux and Greenlanders stands about four 

 feet high at the withers, and measures over five and 

 a half feet from the tip of the nose to the root of the 

 tail, being about the size of a Kerry cow. The 

 muzzle is broad and hairy ; the horns, springing 

 from greatly expanded and flattened bases, curve 

 outwards, downwards, and finally upwards like those 

 of the black wildebeest. The neck is short ; the 

 heavily-built body is covered all over with long 

 shaggy hair and warmly undervested with wool ; the 

 rudimentary tail is quite hidden under so ample an 

 overcoat. The feet are broad ; in each the outer 



